Who are the main players in Australia. I know webcentral are quite big, are there any majors dons?

A recent thread (http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=52697) may answer that question.


Lats...

We are also Australian based :)

Well the big boys of hosting are :

AS mentioned webcentral
And many of the major ISPS e.g Telstra, Ozemail, Peakhour for the business side of things. MelbourneIT are doing some sort of hosting these days! Net Registry is also doing something with its domain packages


We use enet21 for servers located in Australia, This is only for business host that are willing to pay the high price for targeted Australian customers only.

Our other servers are overseas though.

Around on this forum there a few companys from Australia also

surrenderonline.com.au <<-- Thats Us
hostheadquarters.com <<-- Martys
httpme.com <<-- Aussie Bobs
Aussiehosts.com <<-- Editors
myacen.com <<-- Myacen

And a few others that my brain cant think of at the moment sorry if i missed you out!

Kind regards

DOUBLE POST

There's also ozhosting.com.au. They were bought out by that dotbomb - ehyou.com. They listed in the dotcom crazy days and have since pretty amounted to nothing.

They were founded by a brother and sister who were around 20 years of age. The local media loved them as they were so young and had one of those whip-fandangle "dotcoms".

They have changed their name to http://www.destra.com/ to sound like they're not just a bunch of kids who knew an investment banker and who knew how to flog off worthless stock to a gullable public. :cartman:

Thanks everyone. Good to know who the competition is. :)

Theres always froggy and dodo and optus

Also

http://axegroup.com.au http://www.axe.net.au
http://www.ilisys.com.au
http://www.dedicatedhosting.com.au

And also avs.net.au is pretty big Ive heard.

Avs.net.au eheeh big?

Im not exactly sure about that, i have spoke to the owner a few times and i dont think its that big...

He probably patrols the forums also so i dont want to say to much because recently we advertisied in the same magazine and i had alot of intrested parties ask me why he charges so much etc.

I do agree that his prices are very expensive since his dedicated servers are in united states. But if he gets clients he gets clients so that would make him happy.

regards

One of the biggest players not mentioned here is http://hostworks.com.au - they host ninemsn and a number of other high profile sites for Australian companies.

For the people who have posted sites like myacen.com they're nothing more than an Australia company who have bought a www.eservers.biz box - there's a big difference to those who actually have a network in Australia - like about 200ms :>

Webcentral would probably be the leading choice for price/features for someone who wants a serious site hosted for the Australian community.

Matt

Originally posted by mattonline
One of the biggest players not mentioned here is http://hostworks.com.au - they host ninemsn and a number of other high profile sites for Australian companies.

For the people who have posted sites like myacen.com they're nothing more than an Australia company who have bought a www.eservers.biz box - there's a big difference to those who actually have a network in Australia - like about 200ms :>

Webcentral would probably be the leading choice for price/features for someone who wants a serious site hosted for the Australian community.

Matt

We have four servers at eservers.biz, and theirs a reason why. Shazad, & Imran go out of the way to assist their clients and they would have to be one of the best companies I have personally dealt with.

We also now have a server at dsa in Australia. Choppy, as for avs I have heard some interesting stories about them also, I am unsure if they are fictional or not.

Originally posted by mattonline
For the people who have posted sites like myacen.com they're nothing more than an Australia company who have bought a www.eservers.biz box - there's a big difference to those who actually have a network in Australia - like about 200ms :>
Our servers are in the NAC datacenter. Why would anyone in their right mind colo or lease a server in an Australian datacenter?? :cartman:

Due to the fact that there are specific markets out there that have different factors which drive them. Once you work out what they are then you'll understand exactly what i mean.

Originally posted by Myacen
And also avs.net.au is pretty big Ive heard.
avs.net.au is a complete scam...

Originally posted by roly

avs.net.au is a complete scam...
Care to elaborate? You can't just leave us hanging like that. :D

Originally posted by roly

avs.net.au is a complete scam...

Yes and pigs fly.


I am a ex-client of AVS - a happy ex-client at that - only moved on to another webhost because of cost ($AU30 [~US$15] per month is a bit much). With my 5 - 6 months with them - very good.

They were my first webhost.

Not a major player for sure. But I have an office on the Gold Coast, only have really worked the local area here with ads and Yellow pages. But we do have a couple of clients from Vic and Melborune.

*ugh* the self promotion in this thread is staggering....

Anyway, another one that's been around for a long time is
http://www.webtrader.com.au/

They host on rackspace servers, but promote and seem to be very AU based.

Greg Moore

Originally posted by akashik
*ugh* the self promotion in this thread is staggering....

Anyway, another one that's been around for a long time is
http://www.webtrader.com.au/

They host on rackspace servers, but promote and seem to be very AU based.

Greg Moore
Weren't they a day trading site ages ago??

As i posted before we have a few servers in OZ yeah ping times are great in Australia etc...

How do you justify without overselling 120-130 dollars a gig that we are charged at the datacentre ( Thats just bandwidth and no CO LO fee etc ) Only some medium sized Australian business would want, could afford an do host on these servers.

The average person wants a solution that meets the limits of there pockets also. This is why we invest alot of money for servers overseas which are 100 * more profitable and have a bigger customer base than the Aussie expensive servers.

Hosting on Australian packaged servers

50 megs space
250 meg bandwidth
All features

$27 AUD

Hosting on United States packaged servers

250 megs space
4000 meg bandwidth
All features

$27 AUD

You can decide i guess what is more popular!

WEBCENTRAL is huge, Cluster upon cluster of servers i have been to a dc with there servers at connect.com i believe it was ( i can be mistaken )

About the negative comment on avs.net.au i have never used them really so i cant comment...

But a customer i have that was also looking at joining AVS was talking to one of the guys at avs and they did not have nice things to say about us. ( without even knowing us our operation or customer base ) they started suggesting things that were un true.

The admin /sales the customer talked to actually asked if he can give him access to the SurrenderOnline servers we gave him an account on.

Well our customer didnt! Came and joined us thinking that avs was abit to cranky for a host!

This customer has also sent me transcripts of what was said. BUT i have not mentioned it to the actual owner ever so yeah competition is competition i believe.

Sorry for the eye full post..

P.S Looking at http://new.whmag.com It seems in the Sponsor link that AVS IS THE EDITORS CHOICE~ A SPONSORED EDITORS choice is this new???

Kind regards

Last time i looked this wasnt in the advertisement forum, whats it with all the self promotion?

Alan,

glad I wasn't the only one that noticed. :)

Its a comparison about servers been hosted in Australia and the United states... I did not use a package i actually offered i was giving examples all the way!

Jealousy killed the hosts. eheh :D

We are not affilated with the other companies that we mentioned the thread starter asked who are the big boys in Australian hosting etc!

And then it has involved into the difference between companys that are renting co lo servers in the states, Australia or like us both.

Kind regards

ABOUT hostworks!

Who is hosting the microsoft /au/ I would think Microsoft would host the ninemsn site also!

Im not sure im just saying that it strange!

Thats all eheh

Regards

You mean to say that you did'nt know that Kerry Packer and Bill Gates are boardroom buddies? :eek2:

MAX POWER :homer:

Originally posted by akashik


Anyway, another one that's been around for a long time is
http://www.webtrader.com.au/

They host on rackspace servers, but promote and seem to be very AU based.

Greg Moore

They were recently bought out by Destra if I am not mistaken.

Originally posted by SplashHost.com
Last time i looked this wasnt in the advertisement forum, whats it with all the self promotion?
Just a discussion about Australian hosts - and you aren't one. ;):rolleyes: :rolleyes:

Originally posted by davehooper.net


They were recently bought out by Destra if I am not mistaken.

They were indeed. Destra has moved from it's dotcom beginnings to concentrate on web hosting, their strategy is to find web hosting companies in Australia that seem to have a bit of a client base and then buy them out. They also own www.mp3.com.au which I'm suprised is still around.

Originally posted by NexDog

Just a discussion about Australian hosts - and you aren't one. ;) :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
Yeahhhhhh :stickout

PLUG (http://httpme.com) :D PLUG (http://httpme.com) :D PLUG (http://httpme.com) :D PLUG (http://httpme.com) :D PLUG (http://httpme.com) :D

Originally posted by reseller


They were indeed. Destra has moved from it's dotcom beginnings to concentrate on web hosting, their strategy is to find web hosting companies in Australia that seem to have a bit of a client base and then buy them out. They also own www.mp3.com.au which I'm suprised is still around.
Yep. They were a couple of kids that the media loved with one of those new whip fand dangle dot.coms that somehow managed to suck an investment bank onboard to offload toilet paper [stock certificates] to the gullable public hungry to get a slice of the dot.con action. I understand they have changed their name from ehyou.com and they're actually focussed on making money now too. :stickout

Yeah they started with money from their parents and uncles/aunts. Started up with a design compnay that moved into web hosting that moved into buying tons of domains names, that got VC, that then began to fail, and now have taken on people who actually understand business, and are trying to make money. If they buy out all the web hosts in Australia, they might actually start to do it.

I'm just waiting for the day when they say they have bought WebCentral.

Ozemail bought webcentral once, then when UUnet bought ozemail, they dumped webcentral, because UUnet wanted to retain it's own hosting facilities, then of course WorldCom bought UUnet etc.

Hmm wonder if I can buy WebCentral?

Okay I need investors, lets say 10 million of us put in a dollar each and we can all buy it, who's in?

Originally posted by reseller

Hmm wonder if I can buy WebCentral?

Okay I need investors, lets say 10 million of us put in a dollar each and we can all buy it, who's in?

And the rest. $10,000,000 would not buy Web Central

It'd buy one of the pieces of property alongside it for a decent carpark though.

Gary

Originally posted by davehooper.net


And the rest. $10,000,000 would not buy Web Central

um yeah I was kind of joking there..... :D

Originally posted by davehooper.net


And the rest. $10,000,000 would not buy Web Central
Just as long as you like "blue sky" with your purchase. :buck: :cartman:

Hey Everyone,

Just thought I'd add a bit to this thread about avs.net.au.

I'm the owner of AVS Networks and have been running it for nearly five years now. I started it when I was back at uni and now run it full time.

We are by no means a big web host but we are a decent size with over half a dozens servers running right now. We too were approached by a third party acquistion company and I am pretty sure it was for ehyou.com. We declined the offer of a buy out and are concentrating on growing AVS.

Ozhosting which is owned by ehyou has acquired about a dozen midsized hosting companies. This means that there isn't many midsized hosting companies in Australia anymore. If you visit ozhosting.com.au, they have some information in the newsletter section about their acquisitions.

I can't confirm what was told to the new SurrenderOnline customer by an AVS representative. SO are after a different market segment compared to what we are after. We're aiming for the midrange hosting market.

We have a lot of happy customers as mentioned before plus a decent reseller base as well.

Cheers,
Nigel

PS. We received a WHMag Choice Award last year for our good service. Not sure how they found us but we got award no. 10. The one before was Dialtone (which we use) and the one after us was also another company we use. It made us proud being recognised amongst the large internet companies in the US and the only Australian company to receive an award.

Hey who said kids can't run a web hosting company, I'm 18 and still in high school, and I run my own hosting company on the side for pocket money. I also live in australia, and I am subject to hideous internet access bandwidth costs.
3 - 18 au cents per meg, thats ~$50US per gig.

I mean, just how could any australia based hosting company with their servers on australian networks ever turn a profit!? I proudly use a server I will never see with my own eyes, located somewhere in the US where bandwidth costs are sane.

Theres no diversity of infrastructure over here, two companies own all the interstate fibre, and they will keep sucking us dry till some competition appears.

Anyone got a couple of thousand metres of fibre and some cat5 lying around, throw in a couple of hubs and I can start my own network. :cool:

Originally posted by Nigel
We too were approached by a third party acquistion company and I am pretty sure it was for ehyou.com. We declined the offer of a buy out and are concentrating on growing AVS.
If you don't mind me asking, what figures were they talking about in the offer?? I guess ehyou.com are looking at buying up mid-sized hosting companies as a cheap way of improving their revenues etc. Interesting indeed. :)

lol thinking of selling are you bob? :)

Originally posted by reseller
lol thinking of selling are you bob? :)
Nope. :) Just curious. :D

My information has webtrader.net.au sold at 1.2 mil. $900,000 in cash and a further $300,000 in share options.

They had around 3,000 - 4,000 clients according to my information.

That should give you a fair indication of what sorts of $ these guys are offering.

Good question Aussie Bob but I can't say much because we didn't get that far. I really wasn't interested in selling up so moved on :)

I'm not going to sell my company to a bigger company when I've done all the hard yakka. You know what it's like to build a hosting company as well I imagine so if you or I were ever to consider selling up, it would have to be a very decent offer!

About the WebTrader buyout, I heard they only had about 2000 sites which are on Rackspace. I've heard a few bad rumours about WebTraders uptime but I can't confirm anything. I can't imagine Rackspace servers going down very often.

I think it would be more interesting to see how much WebTrader was turning over and how much profit they were making more so than the amount of domain names they hosted.

I think WebTrader have now increased their prices and are not advertising WebTrader anywhere anymore. They are probably just winding it down and trying to convert the customers all to ozhosting.com.au.

I heard along the grapevine that ozhosting now has about 10,000 sites (They advertise on the net enough). Also heard that any host with over 1000 sites now are now positioned in the top 10 of the Australian market (only including Australian companies with servers with AU and US). Probably because ehyou was busy buying out the midsized hosting companies.

Anyone want to confirm those details?

I heard that 1.2 Million (900k cash / 300k shares) as well. Not sure if it's true or not.

Cheers,
Nigel

Originally posted by Nigel
Also heard that any host with over 1000 sites now are now positioned in the top 10 of the Australian market (only including Australian companies with servers with AU and US).

Yeah...we're waiting for our free set of steak knives... :)

Gary

Originally posted by Nigel
Also heard that any host with over 1000 sites now are now positioned in the top 10 of the Australian market (only including Australian companies with servers with AU and US). Probably because ehyou was busy buying out the midsized hosting companies.
Gee, that's kind of sad in a way. :D

I'm sure just like the rest of us, would like to see some kind of domain / site count for Australian hosting companies.

Anyone remember the site called - wheredidwego.com.au? It had a ranking of the top .au hosting companies but this was a few years ago now.

Regards,
Nigel

wheredidwego.com.au was a stocking stuffer for press releases, because everyone was using it for it's results but nobody that mattered (the consumer/user/buyer) knew that it existed. :) It's all good and well to say we ranked number 2 at wheredidwego.com.au or we are in the top 10 at top10.com.au...but if nobody lends any weight to those results...? I'd rather the steak knives.

Cheers

Gary

Originally posted by Nigel
Also heard that any host with over 1000 sites now are now positioned in the top 10 of the Australian market (only including Australian companies with servers with AU and US). Probably because ehyou was busy buying out the midsized hosting companies.


Hey, we're in the top 5 then. ;):D

Originally posted by NexDog


Hey, we're in the top 5 then. ;):D

As well as about 30 others :D

Originally posted by NexDog
Hey, we're in the top 5 then. ;):D
Hey NexDog, right behind ya, nipping at your heels - WOOF!! ;) :D

But I must say that we are setting the standard these days. Hosts like us, Myacen, AussieHosts and httpme are the guiding lights in Down Under Hosting. We get loads of clients from the 2 big boys - WebCentral and Ozhosting (or whatever they're called. :D)

WebCentral? Are they still around? :)

Gary

:D You bad :D

:)

Originally posted by NexDog
But I must say that we are setting the standard these days. Hosts like us, Myacen, AussieHosts and httpme are the guiding lights in Down Under Hosting. We get loads of clients from the 2 big boys - WebCentral and Ozhosting (or whatever they're called. :D)
hehe. Maybe we should team up and take 'em over. :D

Originally posted by Editor
WebCentral? Are they still around? :)

Gary
Web who? :stickout

Years ago I got 1 domain hosted there with 500MB data transfer for about AUS$40.00/mth. I don't know how they even think about competing against the likes of us lot with their high overheads etc. They mainly rely on ignorance in the market place and hope that their clients don't catch on that there are cost effective hosts who provide excellent services.

Although I think they were heading towards to the bigger end of town, but the money's drying up there too. Maybe the pending IPO is not such a good idea. [or have they already floated?] :eek:

Originally posted by Editor
WebCentral? Are they still around? :)

Gary

We have been hit with a flood of webcentral clients lately.. wonder whats going on there?

Same here. Whatever they're doing, I hope it doesn't change! :D

Originally posted by NexDog
Same here. Whatever they're doing, I hope it doesn't change! :D
:D :stickout

We don't see many long term Web Central clients jumping ship. One client brought about 40 domains over, but that was still only one actual person leaving Web Central, and it wasn't because they were just trying to save a few bucks.

It's a completely different ballgame. Someone serious enough about their stuff to have gone onto Web Central in the last 12-24 months would have done so for a very good reason. One doesn't compare $50/yr US Based *nix hosting to Web Central. Someone who has been on them any longer than that just isn't likely to move.

Beau and Laurence, can you define a "flood" of folks jumping off Web Central? A few? A dozen? Dozens? What sort of sites, and are they giving any reasons or just turning up? Interested in hearing more.

Cheers

Gary